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Feminism is currently helping us reach gender equality in 1st world countries

Thank you for accepting this debate. Good luck. Let me open by introducing you to a fairly recent poll. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com... ). A total of 20% of Americans support feminism, despite this an overwhelming majority of 82% of Americans are in favor of equality between the sexes. The only logical explanation for this is people see feminist actions and they don't believe that feminism is for equality. Why do a vast majority of Americans believe in sex equality, but only a small majority of 20% of Americans support feminism? Well let me bring up a woman named Lauren Southern. Some time back she held up a sign saying "I don't need feminism because I believe in equality" ( ) In this video she talks about how in the movement of feminism the only issues that are talked about are women's issues, on the other hand men's issues are outright ignored. She then talks about the many issues men face. This includes men actually being raped MORE than women in the U.S. if you take all rapes into account, including prison rape. ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk... ) Next she talks about how men make up almost half of domestic abuse victims, but they do not receive any of the help that women have when they are victims. She also talks about how men make up 80% of suicide victims. ( http://www.avoiceformen.com... ), 92% of workplace deaths ( http://amptoons.com... ), 97% of combat deaths ( http://www.avoiceformen.com... ) and 77% of homicide ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... ). She also talks about how men go through many of the same problems women do that feminists complain about. This includes objectification, rape, and mistreatment, yet feminism acts like only women go through these things. That is not equality. Many of feminism's responses to this is that is that feminism is actually trying to help solve the issues men face. This is outright not true. When is the last time you've seen a protest that talks about very serious issues men face such as losing custody in 84% of divorces regardless of whether they can do a better job raising the child, despite initiating the divorce 66% of the time. ( http://www.avoiceformen.com... ). I have never seen nor heard of feminists protesting such an issue, therefore one can conclude that feminism does NOT help solve issues men face. Other feminists will say that these issues stem from stereotypes about men and women. I'm not going to deny this, however I will say that feminism is not helping at all. Many of these problems stem from women being seen as victims while men are seen as the abusive perpetrators, such as the domestic abuse problem I previously talked about. This stereotype also causes other issues such as men being 165% more likely to be convicted than women, men receiving 63% longer sentences than women for the exact same crime and studies finding that gender court bias against men is 6 times that of bias against race ( http://www.law.umich.edu... ). Most of all what feminism says is that feminism is helping women's issues, and men having issues is a separate problem. 1. That is outright NOT equality, therefore this defense concedes that feminism is not a movement towards equality. 2. I would have no problem if it weren't for this one thing, that one thing is that feminism makes the problem worse. One major thing they do that hurts the movement towards equality is treat men like the abusive perpetrators and treat women as victims. This is blatantly shown when feminism talks about issues like domestic violence, rape and objectification. These are issues both men and women face, yet feminism treats men like the abusive perpetrators and they treat women as the victims. Sounds like a harmful stereotype to me. Feminists will try to shut down any who speak out against the movement or any who try to talk about men's issues. This is shown by women's studies professors telling their students to go protest against those who talk about men's issues. Here's a news report about feminists protesting people just talking and discussing male issues: Now I understand not all feminists are like this. Some feminists truly believe in equality between the sexes, and I truly hope you are one of those people, pro. If you are one of those people who believe in true equality and consider themselves feminist then I believe you do not belong in the movement. You deserve better, therefore I would like to introduce you to an alternative to being a feminist. Being an egalitarian. Egalitarian: of, relating to, or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Now let me finish explaining why feminism is not a movement for equality by telling a story.The story of Earl Silverman. A video of one of his friends telling the story better than I ever could can be found here: . But I doubt all of you are going to watch the whole video so let me tell the story myself. It all started when Earl left an abusive relationship where his wife abused him. He started looked for domestic abuse shelters to help him. Everywhere he went he found out that the shelters only help female victims. He did not find a shelter. As a result he decided to start his own shelter for male victims, for there are no shelters for them where he lived, Canada. He then followed researchers and those researchers found study after study showed that men were victims of domestic abuse too and how the government viewed domestic violence was outright wrong. (Female victim, male perpetration) He then saw that all of these studies were actively being ignored. He did his own investigation as to why this was. What he found was any study about gendered issues has to be approved by the Minister of the Status of Women has full veto power to any studies that would be published to publicly funded sites. If she denies any study for any reason the report stops at her desk. Later on he started requesting funding from the government. Everywhere he went he was denied funding because wherever he went no funding was offered towards male victims, even though there is funding for female victims. Seems a little sexist doesn't it? He then applied for a hearing in front of a Human's Rights council for sex discrimination. He was denied, over and over. He appealed over and over, and ended up facing two lawyers. After four years the final statement was made that because there were not equal male and female victims it isn't sex discrimination. Which obviously is not true. He then tried to get on public shows to talk about the issues he faces. He eventually was accepted to debate a feminist in public television. The feminist did not show up. In fact feminism created this whole mess with their distorted models and censorship. Next he eventually was so far in dept he could not run his shelter anymore. He was forced to shut down and sell the house. The day after he moved out Earl Silverman was found hanging by the neck in his garage. Earl Silverman had committed suicide. His suicide note can be found here: http://www.familyofmen.com... In this note he says the reason he killed himself is to create a need for funding for male victims. He hoped with his death feminists would realize men can be victims too, and he hoped that maybe they would finally care. Feminism is responsible for his death. If feminism was for equality he would have got funding, male victims would be cared for. If feminism was for equality Earl SIlverman would be alive today. Feminism is not for equality. I rest my case.